Vedic Apprehension Of Legal Plunder Part Two – Further Appraisal

By Author: Premkumar a/l Nadarajan
Total Articles: 29
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Another effect of this deplorable perversion of the law is that it gives to human passions and to political struggles, and, in general, to politics, properly so called, an exaggerated importance. This assertion can be proven by way of an illustration, namely universal suffrage. If law were confined to causing all persons, all liberties, and all properties to be respected--if it were merely the organization of individual right and individual defense--if it were the obstacle, the check, the chastisement opposed to all oppression, to all plunder--is it likely that we should dispute much, as citizens, on the subject of the greater or lesser universality of suffrage? Is it likely that it would compromise that greatest of advantages, the public peace? Is it likely that the excluded classes would not quietly wait for their turn? Is it likely that the enfranchised classes would be very jealous of their privilege? And is it not clear, that the interest of all being one and the same, some would act without much inconvenience to the others? But if the fatal principle should come to be introduced, that, under pretense of organization, regulation, ...
... protection, or encouragement, the law may take from one party in order to give to another, help itself to the wealth acquired by all the classes that it may increase that of one class, whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the ship owners, or artists and comedians; then certainly, in this case, there is no class which may not try, and with reason, to place its hand upon the law, that would not demand with fury its right of election and eligibility, and that would overturn society rather than not obtain it. Since everybody traffics in law for his own profit, anyone should like to do the same. Anyone should like to make it produce the right to assistance, which is the poor man's plunder. To effect this, one race or creed ought to be electors and legislators, that they may organize, on a large scale, alms for their own class, as an opposing creed or race have organized, on a large scale, protection for its own. How is this argument to be answered? Yes, as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it, everybody will be wanting to manufacture law, either to defend himself against plunder, or to organize it for his own profit. The political question will always be prejudicial, predominant, and absorbing; in a word, there will be fighting around the door of the absolute governor. The struggle will be no less furious within it. To be convinced of this, it is hardly necessary to look at what passed in France and in England during the Industrial Revolution; it is enough to know how the question stands. Can there be war against socialism? And by socialism, it is meant by plunder. But what plunder is meant here? For there are two sorts: extralegal and legal plunder. As to extralegal plunder, such as theft, or swindling, which is defined, foreseen, and punished by the penal code. The law sometimes takes its own part. Sometimes it accomplishes it with its own hands, in order to save the parties benefited the shame, the danger, and the scruple. Sometimes it places all this ceremony of magistracy, police, gendarmerie, and prisons, at the service of the plunderer, and treats the plundered party, when he defends himself, as the criminal. In a word, there is a legal plunder. This plunder may be only an exceptional blemish in the legislation of people, and in this case, the best thing that can be done is, without so many speeches and lamentations, to do away with it as soon as possible, notwithstanding the clamors of interested parties. But how is it to be distinguished? Very easily. See whether the law takes from some persons that which belongs to them, to give to others what does not belong to them. See whether the law performs, for the profit of one citizen, and, to the injury of others, an act that this citizen cannot perform without committing a crime. Abolish this law without delay; it is not merely an iniquity--it is a fertile source of iniquities, for it invites reprisals; and if you do not take care, the exceptional case will extend, multiply, and become systematic. No doubt the party benefited will exclaim loudly; he will assert his acquired rights. He will say that the State is bound to protect and encourage his industry; he will plead that it is a good thing for the State to be enriched, that it may spend the more, and thus shower down salaries upon the poor workmen. Take care not to listen to this fallaciousness, for it is just by the systematizing of these arguments that legal plunder becomes systematized. And this is what has taken place. The aberration of the day is to enrich all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalize plunder under pretense of organizing it. Now, legal plunder may be exercised in an infinite multitude of ways. Hence come an infinite multitude of plans for organization; tariffs, protection, privileges, gratuities, backups, progressive taxation, free public education, right to work, right to profit, right to wages, right to assistance, right to apparatuses of labor, gratuity of credit, etc., etc. And it is all these plots, taken as a whole, with what they have in common, legal plunder, that takes the name of socialism. Now socialism, thus defined, and forming a doctrinal body, what other war would you make against it than a war of doctrine? You find this doctrine false, illogical, repulsive. Refute it. This will be all the easier, the more false, absurd, and abominable it is. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out of your legislation every particle of socialism which may have crept into it--and this will be no light work. It is absolutely necessary that this question of legal plunder should be determined, and there are only three solutions of it: 1. When the few plunder the many.2. When everybody plunders everybody else.3. When nobody plunders anybody. Partial plunder, universal plunder, absence of plunder, amongst these we have to make our choice. The law can only produce one of these results.

lecturer at a private learning institution ( UTAR).